Features » July 21, 2014

The Bad Boss Tax

'Walmart is the country's biggest beneficiary of food stamp dollars, and many of those dollars are coming from its own workers, like me.'-Bene't Holmes, 25

Can you name the worst job you’ve ever had? For Cliff Martin, that’s not an easy question. All three of his current jobs—delivering newspapers, delivering magazines and working as a janitor—are strong contenders. Taken together, they pay so poorly that the 20-year-old Northfield, Minnesota, native relies on MNsure, the state Medicaid plan, for healthcare and lives at home with his father to save money. But what if Martin’s bosses had to fork over a fee to the state for paying him so badly? That money, in turn, could be used to help support Martin and his fellow low-wage workers in a variety of ways, from direct subsidies for food and housing to social programs such as Medicaid or public transportation.

TakeAction Minnesota, a network that promotes economic and racial justice in the state, wants to make that fee a reality. It’s developing the framework for a bill that it hopes will be introduced in 2015 by state legislators who have worked with the network in the past. As conceived, the “bad business fee” legislation would require companies to disclose how many of their employees are receiving public assistance from the state or federal government. Companies would then pay a fine based on the de facto subsidies they receive by externalizing labor costs onto taxpayers.

TakeAction Minnesota’s plan is one prong of a larger national effort. As progressive organizations grapple with how to turn years of public outrage over income inequality into policies for structural change, a network of labor and community organizing groups has seized upon the bad business fee as a solution that might take off.

Vampire businesses

Just how much money are low-wage businesses draining from local, state and federal coffers? A study released in April by Americans for Tax Fairness, a coalition of more than 400 organizations that advocate progressive tax reform, estimated that Walmart alone costs taxpayers $6.2 billion annually in public assistance. That report draws from a 2013 study by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which estimated that Walmart cost taxpayers, on average, between $3,015 and $5,815 per worker. For a hypothetical 300-person Walmart Supercenter in Wisconsin, that added up to as much as $1.75 million in public subsidies per year. Those taxpayer dollars come in the form of joint federal-state programs such as Medicaid and the School Breakfast Program, as well as federal ones such as the National School Lunch Program, the Section 8 Housing Program, the Earned Income Tax, Low Income Home Energy Assistance and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps).

Americans for Tax Fairness used the House Democrats’ study to extrapolate Walmart’s public-assistance burden on each state. In Minnesota, for example, where Walmart has 20,997 employees, the public burden totaled $92.7 million per year. That’s $92.7 million Walmart isn’t paying in wages or benefits, but that instead is being borne by taxpayers—taxpayers who, of course, include Walmart workers.

The study also notes that Walmart profits from food stamps on the consumer end. According to the company’s own estimates, Walmart captures 18 percent of the SNAP market, some $13.5 billion annually. The irony is not lost on Walmart worker Bene’t Holmes, a 25-year-old single mother of a 5-yearold boy. “Recently I was forced to apply for food stamps just so my son and I don’t starve. Walmart is the country’s biggest beneficiary of food stamp dollars, and many of those dollars are coming from its own workers, like me,” she writes in an email to In These Times. “I want to raise my son in a nice neighborhood, but when Walmart only pays me $8.75 an hour, I can’t afford it. If it weren’t for my parents letting us live with them, we’d be on the streets. I shouldn’t have to face the reality of poverty and public assistance working at the country’s largest employer, but Walmart pays hundreds of thousands of us so little we can barely stay afloat.”

Walmart isn’t alone; there are thousands of other low-wage employers. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report, 1.5 million hourly workers reported earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in 2013, and another 1.8 million said they earned less than that—which means they’re either legally excluded from minimum-wage laws or illegally underpaid. (Those numbers are likely low; they don’t include salaried workers and rely on workers feeling comfortable disclosing their wage data to the census.) According to the latest salary data from Glassdoor.com, McDonald’s cashiers make an average of $7.81 an hour; Target team members, $8.94 an hour; and J. Crew sales associates, $9.17 an hour. For a part-time job of 30 hours a week, all of those hourly salaries would qualify those workers for SNAP benefits and federal Medicaid, even if they didn’t have families to support.

And while conservatives would argue that the majority of low-wage earners are teenagers slinging burgers for pocket change, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that the average age of workers who would benefit from a raise to $10.10 an hour is 35, and 88 percent are 20 or older. Fifty-six percent of them are women, and 28 percent have children. On average, the EPI calculates, these low-wage workers bring in half of their family’s total income.

Most of those minimum-wage workers are in the service industry, particularly in food service. And not coincidentally, taxpayers are also shelling out to prop up food industry wages. Studies last year from the National Employment Law Project and the University of California, Berkeley, showed that fastfood companies cost taxpayers an additional $7 billion per year in public assistance, with McDonald’s accounting for $1.2 billion. The Berkeley study notes that fast-food companies pay cashiers and other frontline workers a median wage of $8.69 an hour, and more than half of those workers rely on one or more public programs, compared to 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.

These companies often drain government coffers in other ways, too. The Americans for Tax Fairness report notes that Walmart avoids about $1 billion per year in federal taxes. Policy research center Good Jobs First reports on its Walmart Subsidy Watch website that the company has received more than $1.2 billion in “tax breaks, free land, infrastructure assistance, low-cost financing and outright grants from state and local governments around the country.”

Federal lawmakers are taking note. When the UC-Berkeley report came out, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) released a statement saying, “Anyone concerned about the federal deficit only needs to look at this report to understand a major source of the problem: multi-billion dollar companies that pay poverty wages.”

With Washington ground to a halt, getting a bad business fee on the federal level seems unlikely at the moment. But state and local activists aren’t waiting for Congress.

Though the plan is in its infancy, NPA and JWJ see the bad business fee as uniquely positioned to catch on across the country. To build lasting change, says NPA’s executive director George Goehl, policies must provide short-term, tangible results and have long-term, transformative potential. He believes the bad business fee does both.

Martin, a member of TakeAction Minnesota and an enthusiastic supporter of the plan, agrees: “My life will be easier because of this,” he says. “It’s also the foundation of a totally new economy and totally new way of thinking about the way our economy works, what we are putting our money into, [and] the true effects of how we’re spending money.”

The bad business fee has the potential to bring together an “unusual set of allies,” according to Dan McGrath, executive director of TakeAction Minnesota.

As inequality has become a hot-button issue, the solutions on offer tend to focus either on taxing the extremely wealthy or on raising workers’ wages. What makes the bad business fee particularly attractive is that it does both of those things. It makes the connection conceptually between the low wages at the bottom of the work chain and the outsized incomes at the top, and sets out both to punish companies that keep wages low, and to create value out of that punishment for the people struggling on low incomes.

In that way, the fee is win-win. If companies seek to avoid it, they end up doing something just as good for their employees, or even better. Martin says, “For me in particular, the better part is my boss may be thinking, ‘Well, I should just pay my employees better. I should just pay a living wage. I should just give Cliff some benefits.’ ”

To Liz Ryan Murray, policy director at NPA, the bad business fee bridges the issues of workers’ rights and taxpayers’ rights. Often conversations around public benefits get mired down in arguments about deficits and the cost to the taxpayer, ignoring the value of the programs to the people who depend on them and rarely conceiving of “the taxpayer” as a low-wage worker herself. But, Murray notes, on this issue there’s no way to split them apart—the taxpayer and the worker have the same interest in seeing big companies pay their fair share.

Goehl believes that the policy even has the possibility of appealing to conservatives. “I think about my dad in southern Indiana who, for most of my life, was a fiscal conservative. Handouts to corporations that pay low wages were the kind of stuff that really upset him,” he says. Introducing the badbusiness fee in conservative places may prove educational, Goehl says, in smoking out the opposition. “Wichita would be interesting because the Koch brothers are there, and to see what kind of stops they would roll out would be fascinating,” Goehl says. “It would also be nice to win something in a redder area to show it’s possible everywhere.”

The nuts and bolts

Rather than dictating from above, the NPA and JWJ plan to anchor the initiative with what JWJ’s director of campaigns, Erica Smiley, calls “a hub for support, strategy, development and shared experience, shared lessons,” in which groups interested in the policy can get help and connect with one another.

Beyond that, the details of the policy itself are still vague. The coalition wants to leave room for local flexibility, so that the tax can take different forms in different cities and states, depending on the particular needs and desires of the community.

But there will be some constants. The extent to which a company’s employees have to rely on public assistance serves as a measure of whether that company provides jobs that can sustain people, and is thus the most likely basis for how the fee would be assessed. The fee might be implemented on a per-employee basis—in Cook County, Illinois, NPA and JWJ partners are considering a $5,000 charge for each employee receiving public assistance— or as a lump sum based on how much an entire sector costs taxpayers, which would then be split up among the employers in that sector. The organizers also want to hold big businesses accountable for their supply chains and franchisees. For instance, if McDonald’s Corporation got slapped with a fee for each restaurant that underpays its workers, it could be pushed to include higher wages in its franchise contracts. Similarly, if Walmart had to pay not just for its retail employees, but the workers in its warehouses, it might have an incentive to require better wages from subcontractors.

Though the policy is modeled to target mega-employers—which, according to a 2012 National Employment Law Project report, employ 66 percent of the low-wage workforce—Murray hopes that this will have a salutary effect on all wages. If the fee encourages Walmart, Target and McDonald’s to raise their wages, smaller businesses may have to do the same.

As to where the funds recouped through the bad business fee will go, it’s important to the organizers that some be used to strengthen safetynet programs—such as Medicaid and housing assistance—that underpaid workers rely on to cover basic needs. Those programs have been stretched thin thanks to the years of austerity following the financial crisis. “We need a stronger safety net, not a more tattered one,” Murray says. However, she stresses that working-class people should be the ones who decide how the money is spent in their own communities.

There are plenty of options. At a municipal level, Murray explains, the money could go to an existing development department that could manage and distribute the money. On a statewide level, it could be distributed through the revenue department as a tax break for workers. There’s also the possibility of distributing some of the funds to nonprofits involved with direct worker support, childcare or food assistance.

McGrath says the money could go to bolster the public services that workers rely on, or to hire more people to enforce wage and hour laws. “Minnesota succeeded in raising its minimum wageto $9.50 an hour by 2016 and indexing it to inflation,” he says. “But we have a paltry number of wage and hour investigators in our state. How will we know that people are actually being paid the wage that was just won?”

Elsewhere, other community and labor partners are busy brainstorming about what would make sense in their states and cities. In Chicago, housing subsidies are a possibility; in New York, the money could be used to offset the rising costs of public transportation; in San Francisco, a combination of housing and transportation issues is under consideration, as gentrification has rapidly made it harder for low-wage workers to live near their jobs. In New Mexico, using a bad business fee to support early childhood education is being discussed.

Cliff Martin would also like to see the money go to incentivize worker-owned businesses or co-ops. “Putting out subsidies for the economy I actually want to be a part of, and not just programs to keep us barely living—that would be my preference,” he says. “In my mind those go hand in hand. Bad business fee? Good business incentive.”

The possibilities are nearly endless— it’s easier in some ways to say what the money and the policy should not do. “Certainly we would not be satisfied if the money just went into some fund to pay off some deficit,” Goehl says.

Structural change

Winning the bad business fee will require a delicate balance between arguing that jobs should pay a decent wage and arguing for stronger, more universal social supports for those not at the top of the economic food chain. Too narrow, and the policy risks demonizing the very public welfare programs it aims to strengthen; too broad, and it loses its punch.

But the bad business fee fits into the broader strategy for structural change being laid out by NPA, JWJ and their coalition partners. The fee is designed to complement and encourage—rather than supplant—struggles in the workplace and broader efforts to raise the minimum wage. Giving local people the power to decide on where the money goes can create infrastructure for other organizing, JWJ’s Smiley suggests. Workers at Walmart, for example, could create neighborhood committees to negotiate where the money should be spent, and to inform others in the community that they might be qualified to receive something. “You could imagine [workers’] organizations being able to get to a different scale in certain communities,” she says.

Smiley also sees it as part of the enforcement mechanism for things like local living wage ordinances—a potential stick rather than the endless carrots of tax breaks and subsidies that corporations receive for so-called job creation.

Instead of cities and states genuflecting to big companies in the hope of boosting local economies, Smiley thinks this policy could make the needs of residents come first. “We’re trying to change the narrative as to who is valued in our communities, what is valued in our communities, really speaking to the value of working people and their families as the heart of our cities and our neighborhoods—as opposed to the big corporations, who are externalizing their costs but totally privatizing their profits,” she says.

The tax is a first step in changing the way we think about corporations, Goehl says. “Corporations have to apply for a charter every year to continue to be a corporation in this country,” he says. “We’ve been taught not to think about the fact that corporations are something we allow to be created. We don’t think, ‘Well, wait, we could be asking for a lot more from them just by the fact that we allow them to exist.’ ”

McGrath takes it a step further. “We are trying to start a conversation about what is the highest and best use of government,” he says. “What is the proper role for government in an economy that is experiencing such profound income inequality? Is the role of government to subsidize major corporations? [Or] is it to actually support the workers?”

Sarah Jaffe is a staff writer at In These Times and the co-host of Dissent magazine's Belabored podcast. Her writings on labor, social movements, gender, media, and student debt have been published in The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Prospect, AlterNet, and many other publications, and she is a regular commentator for radio and television. You can follow her on Twitter @sarahljaffe.

Why should I have to pay because big box stores are cheap.. This is one more liberal give away

Posted by Dan Richards on 2014-09-01 08:28:01

FedSec;

Yes, "those workers will eventually have to be replaced if the corporation wants to stay in business"...but they don't necessarily have to be replaced HERE!

In truth, companies have been reacting to such threats for quite some time now, and the fact is that they have a STRONG tendency not to pay above-market wages. If such demands are placed on them, then they simply transfer production - or, in many cases, the bulk of their business period, since consumer markets exist elsewhere today as well - overseas, or in some locality that is more friendly to employers. And, ultimately, there's not a damn thing anyone - including governments - can do about it. Look at Venezuela today, by way of example. Or Argentina. History is replete with examples of failed attempts at corralling capital and employers. It just can't be done.

While many of those on the left are loath to admit it, the fact is that domestic workers need employers a lot more than employers need domestic workers. You can try all sorts of legal gyrations designed to force employers to continue providing domestic jobs....but, in the end, "force" just doesn't work. You simply can't enslave risk taking, or ambition, or industriousness, or capital itself, for that matter. They're all going to follow the path of least resistance.

If force doesn't work, then what's left for the worker? In truth, over the long term, it's pretty much limited to his providing the most competitive labor alternative available to the employer as a incentive. I suspect the longer American workers try to ignore that reality, the further behind the 8-ball they're going to find themselves.

Posted by Ken_Meyer on 2014-08-23 04:24:29

Bewlls;

Are you saying that the labor involved in making in Pakistan doesn't want the job? Or isn't it true "labor"?

While perhaps there's no "profit" for labor, there IS compensation for value of the labor provided. Face it; it's not the Pakistan worker's fault that "workers" in the U.S. aren't willing to actually BE "workers" by way of being competitive.

"Capitalism with the Union" is NOT "slavery". It just seems that way to people like you who find themselves lacking on a competitive basis; you're transferring YOUR limitations to the world at large, and thinking that, simply because YOU can't cut it on your own, others suffer the same restriction. Believe me, they don't. There are a LOT of workers out there who are able to make their way ON THEIR OWN in this world WITHOUT the necessity of being subsidized.

Posted by Ken_Meyer on 2014-08-23 04:10:43

"bulldawg"

You might blame "president ragon" but, after reading your post, one can't help but think that a lot of the blame should rest on our educational system and the "educators" it employs.

Posted by Ken_Meyer on 2014-08-23 04:00:59

Instead of taxing those entities that actually EMPLOY workers, why not tax those that bitch about the contributions of others WHILE MAKING NO CONTRIBUTION THEMSELVES?!

Why not start with the author of this article? Recognizing the problem, surely she's prepared to step in and correct it, isn't she? I mean - given her level of bitching - why shouldn't we expect HER to do BETTER provide jobs at higher-than-minimum-wage for a couple of MILLION workers?

What's that? She's not in a position to hire any significant numbers of workers at all? Even at significantly less than wages? And she sure isn't in a position to pay any significant amount of taxes? That's something she leaves to OTHERS, is it?...."others" who actually EARN their way in this world? Who would have thought it!!!! [smile]

The world is always going to have more than enough constantly complaining parasites like "Sarah Jaffe" here; people who talk a good show, but when it comes to making an actual CONTRIBUTION toward workers - and society in general - are usually found retreating back into the woodwork they crawled out of. Real surprise, 'eh?

Posted by Ken_Meyer on 2014-08-23 03:57:22

Even the House Democrat's study does not include the WOTC subsidy employers receive. This tax break is given without requirements to pay workers enough to remove them from the public assistance programs it targets. WOTC is a more direct labor subsidy reaped by the worst of the worst employers.http://www.doleta.gov/business...

Posted by Michael Srsic on 2014-08-04 14:10:42

everyone keeps forgeting that it was president ragon who made it possiable for corperations to do what they are doing because of the laws that were passed with rider bills that were for big bussisness and also made it so they could outsource the jobs that should be here in the us, plus the house and senete are the ones complaning about the rasing of the minomine wage and for everyones info the republicians where the ones who wanted to raise the minumen wage but the demacrates are the ones who are fighting agianst it dose anyone remember when they were for the people and not for themself. when the goverment makes these companies to start closeing there overseas plants and bring the jobs back to the us then things will start to work for the best and they need to raise the wage rate for the simple reason is that things in the stores are more expensive and people don't make enough to support themselves.

Posted by bulldawg on 2014-07-29 10:24:39

not a problem but again I guess you missed out on the news, ill simplify it so even you can comprehend itdems are on their knees to the wall street banksters and the reps are grabbing their ankles for the same group. now and then they change positions just for show. the media is owned by these same corporations and spend their time telling us what we see is not really happening.the banksters dictate to the congress what laws to pass or not pass and what is or is not acceptable to them. 1 small example shows that it only took wall street 5 yrs to crash the economy after repealing the Glass-Stegall act. and more recently we hear from the SCOTUS that corporations are people. you may need a sledge hammer between the eyes to wake up but not everyone does

Posted by lilbear68 on 2014-07-28 10:13:03

Thank you! Feel free to use both barrels next time ignorance regurgitates neoliberal dogma.

Posted by Thirdcloud on 2014-07-28 09:36:57

There should be a discussion about paying servers HALF the minimum hourly wage and the practices of constructive termination--cutting back shifts to avoid unemployment etc.

If Illinois allowed a class action for labor practices plaintiffs lawyers would have a field day because there isn't a restaurant doing business that isn't stealing from those who can least afford to complain.

Labor protections in Illinois are a poor excuse for law.

Posted by Thirdcloud on 2014-07-28 09:29:05

If you earn a paycheck, you are a wage slave.

Posted by smallbear on 2014-07-27 21:55:18

"...why would people strive to work full-time?"

Because, unlike Republican politicians and banksters, most American workers take pride in the work they do, and care about their communities.

Posted by smallbear on 2014-07-27 21:54:28

Then who would produce and move their goods/services.?

Posted by smallbear on 2014-07-27 21:49:52

No, it fled the scene the first time a company called in the police, the militia, or the national guard to put down a strike.

Posted by smallbear on 2014-07-27 21:48:32

Thee is no such thing as a "free market". If you want a 'free market' you must outlaw lobbyists, tax shelters, , tax breaks, and government subsidies.

Posted by smallbear on 2014-07-27 21:47:17

Why should people who never shop at those stores underwrite labor costs? And if that guy is inept, then replace him with someone who isn't Or corporations are taking bad employees because they are cheap? Well, you get what you pay for, and if you don't pay very much, they you get bottom of the barrel.

Posted by Adriana Pena on 2014-07-26 21:54:37

Sorry, but capitalism fled the scene the moment those corporations make taxpayers underwrite their labor costs.

Posted by Adriana Pena on 2014-07-26 21:51:41

y would we want a supply-constrictive payment direct from boss to worker instead of a less constrictive indirect transfer through the prog tax system?

Posted by Dawson Allen on 2014-07-26 20:18:42

Here's a novel plan for you. If Minnesota doesn't want to pay out $92.7 million to Walmart workers, just cut out all the welfare mooch programs. Problem solved.

Why should decent hard-working people have to subsidize Cliff Martin's ineptitude or torpidity by paying higher taxes or paying more for products?

Posted by Cicero on 2014-07-26 14:36:21

Another great idea that will never fly in corporate Amerika.

Posted by JE Farrow on 2014-07-26 12:59:02

BUT the Republicans support them. and do not want to tax them because it would effect the campaign contributions. Examine how politicians retire with the campaign funds full and they pocket the money while saying they are honest

Posted by William Bednarz on 2014-07-26 11:15:50

Capitalism without the Union is slavery. Free trade means if a t-post can be made in packastan for 2$ everything else is profit and comes free. All profit is removed by Home depot and other big box so doing business and using them for parts or material means there is no profit for labor.

Posted by BellsNwhistles on 2014-07-22 16:48:16

I still don't understand how this is going to work. If an employee is only working 30 hours/part-time ("For a part-time job of 30 hours a week, all of those hourly salaries would qualify those workers for SNAP benefits and federal Medicaid, even if they didn’t have families to support."), do we think that person should be making enough to not be on some federal assistance? Cause if this passes, then why would people strive to work full-time? Or would the government mandate that employers only provide full-time work? I see that leading to a lot of people losing their jobs because most employers won't need that many full-time people. What about those people working three jobs? Do all three of those employers get fined? What is one of those employers is Costco and that individual is making $11.00/hr but only working 10+ hours? Will we still fine Costco? In theory, the idea may have some legs, but I just don't see how it works in the real world.

Posted by JGrant21084 on 2014-07-22 16:29:43

unfortunately you missed out on the news, we haven't been in a capitalist system for decades now having decended into full on corporate facism

Posted by lilbear68 on 2014-07-22 11:16:01

There are national laws that dictate how a corporation can classify its workers. Walmart would need Congress to enact changes to the labor laws so that it could legally classify a cashier, a janitor or a floor salesman as a contractor. I doubt that's going to happen.

Besides, Apple pays well above the minimum wage and this policy is aimed primarily at those corporations who pay their CEOs massively exorbitant salaries while keeping their employees' wages at or below the minimum (see Walmart, McDonald's, Target, most restaurant chains, etc.).

I believe this policy would also help those home health workers who SCOTUS has essentially forbidden to unionize.

Posted by FedSec on 2014-07-22 09:53:31

Impossible until we take back the House! Voting is how that is done. . .

Posted by damspam on 2014-07-22 09:51:58

what the heck are you babbling on about?

Posted by odikhmantievich on 2014-07-22 09:51:24

And that wouldn't be capitalism, would it? The free market can't have it both ways.

Posted by FedSec on 2014-07-22 09:49:03

"However I am concerned these same corporations may just decide not to keep people receiving subsidies. Right to work, you know."

Unless and until the corporations become the government, I don't see any way they can keep the workers from receiving public assistance. Sure, they can fire the workers, but those workers will eventually have to be replaced if the corporation wants to stay in business. Can't run a business that serves the public without a sufficient amount of workers. So far, the corporations have continued to pay the workers the bare minimum. This bad business tax has the potential to either force the corporations to raise wages or help strengthen the social safety net by replenishing the tax coffers their workers will use.

I'm glad the people involved are planning to go through the local and state governments, rather than the federal government. More chance to see this new policy actually be enacted in some (most likely blue) places rather than have the whole policy stalled by the intransigent Congress. And if the policy works as well as it looks like it can, more state and local governments will jump on the band wagon rather than continuing to watch their tax receipts dwindle with the corporations remaining as the only winners in the game.

Posted by FedSec on 2014-07-22 09:47:22

Hang on a sec there. In the US, the term "socialism" has been stretched and flattened to be a catch-all term for any government action in the marketplace.

There's a lot of lot of light between the sort of mixed-market economies seen in Democratic North America and Western Europe (regulation, taxation, social security nets, support for collective bargaining, certain industries run by the government), and the centrally-planned, state-owned dictatorships of the old Soviet Union.

Posted by Jonathan Roth on 2014-07-22 09:37:20

Interesting program, but I have one question: what about corporations like Apple that don't employ workers, but contract with them instead? Would this fee push companies like Wal-Mart to start contracting with workers to avoid the penalty? How do we make sure that corporations that cause work to be done take responsibility for the impact of their treatment of working people on society as a whole, whether they employ workers or contract with them?

Posted by David Bensman on 2014-07-22 09:28:45

if the govt can force a minimum wage then they can also force a maximum pay limit too

Posted by lilbear68 on 2014-07-21 19:43:37

I am embarrassed I can agree with this. It is just but seems wrong. Kind of like socialism (just but wrong and impossible).

There should be some form of justice for wage salves. They do exist.

Posted by OdinsAcolyte on 2014-07-21 15:54:23

Great idea! And the corporations paying starvation wages can afford to pay for the subsidies their employees receive. However I am concerned these same corporations may just decide not to keep people receiving subsidies. Right to work, you know. And I can uncover a reason to fire almost anyone if I look hard enough. And these folks know very well the working poor can not afford lawyers. Justice and fair treatment don't apply to the working poor.